4G BaseBand Support with TeakLite4? Add Also CEVA-Bluetooth!

4G BaseBand Support with TeakLite4? Add Also CEVA-Bluetooth!
by Eric Esteve on 05-09-2014 at 4:46 am

The CEVA-TeakLite-4 is the DSP IP issued from the TeakLite family, started about 15 years ago with the 16-bit, single MAC TeakLite. Now the TeakLite-4 is a 32-bit, quad MAC IP core, supporting 2G/3G/4G Wireless BaseBand or PowerLine Communication. But even the latest BaseBand computational requirement doesn’t saturate this… Read More


Do You Really Know RapidIO?

Do You Really Know RapidIO?
by Eric Esteve on 05-06-2014 at 4:53 am

About 10 years ago, I was in charge of the product definition of our next IP to be released, the PCI Express gen-1 Controller. I was also involved in the decision process to select the new functions to develop, in respect with the market size, all of this being the definition of “marketing”. The reason why our company decided not to develop… Read More


Leveraging Design Team Energy!

Leveraging Design Team Energy!
by Eric Esteve on 05-03-2014 at 5:12 am

Once upon a time, in 1987 to be specific, a French design team was trying to develop a 100% Made in France supercomputer. In fact, not really 100%, as the CPU chips were supposed to be made by Weitek, but we never saw any of these chips, probably too challenging to be designed right first time! Anyway, I was in charge of the design of the … Read More


FD-SOI : SMIC or…Who else?

FD-SOI : SMIC or…Who else?
by Eric Esteve on 05-01-2014 at 9:12 am

In fact, as of today, nobody can refer to an official statement made by any STM executive about name of the foundry able to process FD-SOI wafers in 28nm. We just know that the agreement is about to (or has been) signed… But we may speculate, and try to use our rational thinking. For example, the Semiwiki readers had the opportunity to… Read More


Eric Esteve to Present during CDN Live 2014 in Munich

Eric Esteve to Present during CDN Live 2014 in Munich
by Eric Esteve on 05-01-2014 at 4:00 am

I will have the privilege to give an “IP Outlook” presentation during next Cadence event in Europe, CDN-Live to be held in Munich the 19[SUP]th[/SUP] to 21[SUP]st[/SUP] of May. I had a look at the agenda, and the conference will be pretty busy, especially on Tuesday, as there will be more than fifty presentations, starting at 10:30… Read More


Welcome, LPDDR4!

Welcome, LPDDR4!
by Eric Esteve on 04-23-2014 at 3:46 am

Thanks to memory controller expert Marc Greenberg, Marketing Director for DDRn Controller IP with Synopsys, for this post “Qualcomm announces first application processor with LPDDR4 capability”. According with Marc, this Application Processor, the Snapdragon 810, is “the first product that I’m aware of that will use LPDDR4… Read More


Does Processor IP still get the Lion’s share in 2013?

Does Processor IP still get the Lion’s share in 2013?
by Eric Esteve on 04-17-2014 at 1:00 pm

I think that the answer is pretty obvious, but the interesting point is to figure out which processor type, and which part of revenues, up-front license or royalties? One of my customers, let’s call him Mr. X, ask me to clarify this point. Mr. X has bought the excellent report from Gartner “Market Share: Semiconductor Design Intellectual… Read More


Death to ‘content marketing’

Death to ‘content marketing’
by Eric Esteve on 04-10-2014 at 9:39 am

If you ask me: Are you blogging for Semiwiki? The real answer could be:

No, I am just telling stories, but these are true stories! This idea is perfectly illustrated by this post that I found on:

http://www.pivotalpod.com/death-to-content-marketing/

And in particular this extract, as it is something that I could have written … Read More


MIPI IP segment to reach $100M? Yes, …

MIPI IP segment to reach $100M? Yes, …
by Eric Esteve on 04-04-2014 at 10:00 am

… in 2019. At that time, the total Interface IP market is expected to weight between $900 million and $1 billion. If we want to understand this IP market segment dynamics, we have to look at protocol based products like USB (from USB 1.0 defined in 1996 at 12 Mbit/s to USB 3.1 supporting 10 Gbps data rate) or PCI Express (from PCIe gen-1… Read More


Bye-Bye DDRn Protocol?

Bye-Bye DDRn Protocol?
by Eric Esteve on 03-30-2014 at 11:34 am

In fact, this assertion is provocative, as the DDR4 protocol standard has just been released by JEDEC… after 10 years discussion around the protocol features. Yes, the first discussions about DDR4 have started ten years ago! Will DDR4 be used in the industry? The answer is certainly yes, and DDR4 will most probably be used for years.… Read More